SMB 1 sprites

[Arne]

I decided to take a break from what I'm supposed to be doing and just play around a bit -> Reinterpreting the SMB 1 sprites with a partially lost black line style, using a 4-5 color restriction. I didn't think much about palette limits or anything like that.



Bit if a rush work. I guess awesomeface Starman turned out the best.

Small lessons rubbed in: The importance of simplifying any sort of random noise or squigglyness into a simple line, curve, circle, definite structure (or remove completely). Extra colors can actually reduce readability. Roadsigns have few colors, after all.

Lessons not learned: ?

[ptoing]

Very nice style and it should work on the NES as well, some things would perhaps be simplyfied colourwise to get to the 4 sprite palette limits. But other than that I really have no crits.

[PypeBros]

lovely in overall. The only thing I would stand against is the use of black on the distant "hills". They mess up with e.g. goombas feet.

[Arne]

Agreed about trees. Maybe. At any rate I'm cautious of using black in the background since I like it low contrast/fogged. I notice now that I did have a darker but not black color available. It's used on the underworld tiles.

Now it looks a bit wimpy. A hue shift difference might improve the situation.

The fish lost a bit too many of its lines I think, so I added a few.

 I also wanted to lose some on the top of the Goomba head. Not sure how that works. Looks like I was too aggressive. It's easier to subtly lose line on the curved bits.



Well, the animation sort of works, but it looks kind of strange.


Should Mario have a mullet? He's a bit blocky there. His legs/feet are kind of rectangular, and the lack of lines around the hand bothers me but as soon as I tried to add some he looked 'cut-out'.

[Dusty]

I think the animation could do better with either a bob or head rotation... or both.

Given your very stylistic choice here, I think something very exaggerated would fit these sprites better.

[Arne]

Yeah, perhaps.

Wasted some more time doing enemies from... I'll let you guess.

[Atnas]

Lovely! <3 Two things.

I messed with the goomba a bit, the animation had his back leg poking in either direction and i was wondering if something where the feet were planted would be better. It loses the wobbly goodness and just feels static, but I wonder if there's something in there that you might find useful.


The second thing is, I thought for a long while that the tree trunk was some sort of naked man, until I read that there was supposed to be a tree. I mean, the little dudes got a body with arms and feet, and a head with eyes and hair and all! o u o

[Mathias]

Psh these versions are so much better than their originals. Oozing with character even at that res and limitations, so nice. Ha, you even got the red crab in there from the old smash bros! That a Donkey Kong crocodile chomper thingy in top right? Hey you need a chomp-chain.

[L___E___T]

Wow, this is a really nice idea and an awesome attempt.  Something about some of the black outlines seem to jar though.  It's like the black is too harsh but I don't see a way around it either.  The darker ramps were already used in SMB1 so that defeats the object and goes without saying (but I've mentioned anyway)...

I wonder if looking at some Gimmick! screens might be useful, as the Sunsoft artists used less black there and got a similar result.  

http://www.vgmuseum.com/pics5/gimmick.html

It's the best example of similarly stylistic pixel art on the NES/Famicom in my opinion, so I hope it's a relevant suggestion.  The clouds in particular are top-tier.

[Arne]

Heberekeand Gimmick are both supercute. I don't really mind the black much. I've got a bit of a dislike for colored lines around sprites with few colors.



SMB page - I don't know where this project is heading. I just wanted to draw some stuff. Animation is later concern. Usually it becomes really clear when running ingame which animations work and not. I actually programmed a primitive platforming engine some time ago, so I'm thinking I could put these gfx in.